


It's Just a Joke

by Muzuki_chan



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Gen, M/M, angst i think, implied shizaya, lung cancer shizaya, or at least that's what I titled it in my drafts centuries ago, tw: lung cancer, why does anyone trust me with these tags I'm fucking terrible with them lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 18:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11742576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muzuki_chan/pseuds/Muzuki_chan
Summary: He will play along, if that's what Shinra wants.





	It's Just a Joke

 It's a joke.

 

Izaya hums to himself with an off-key tone of fingers tapping a staccato rhythm against Shinra's newly polished coffee table. It's just a joke, because he's still young - the youthful age of twenty-three, weight not too shabby and a healthy diet that is strung along with daily exercise that comes in a tightly knit package of an established relationship with Shizuo Heiwajima.... So all in all, it's just a terribly played out joke with not even a hint of good comedy.

 

The night is still young, cars racing down the street in tortuously slow pacing that Izaya can't help but find it boring. Boring, but better than listening to Shinra's dumb joke that simmers in the air like it's important. As if the news could save his life.

 

"Shinra," Izaya laughs, an obnoxiously high-pitched laugh that stumbles its way out of his throat until his breathing hitches, "your crude jokes might work on Shizu-chan, but I'm nothing like that protozoic brute. So what do the test results really say? A cold or the seasonal flu, perhaps?"

 

The calendar pinned on the wall shows that it's in the first weeks of December, red x's and circles sprawled out over the bold numbers, and the hand-me-down clock that Celty had received from Shingen rests dutifully on the kitchen counter. The constant ticking makes the churning of Izaya's stomach whirl, the nauseous taste of metallic bile bubbling up his throat. Everything is becoming uncomfortable.

 

While Izaya's spiraling down with the sickness that won't leave, Shinra sits on the opposite side of the room. He leans forward with that cheery, stupid stare that Izaya would have earlier enjoyed before receiving the news. But now everything rubs him the wrong way and for once, he wishes that Shinra would at least take off the white coat when he's wearing a grey turtle neck underneath that seems suffocating to be in.

 

"I know that this may be hard for you--"

 

"It isn't the fact that it's hard, Shinra, but rather the fact that you would rather pull an April's fool joke on me when it's _December_."

 

"--but it's not uncommon for patients to experience the five stages of grief."

 

A temporary deafness settles in. The next couple of sentences becomes muted as if Shinra himself were shoving bucket-fulls of cotton into his ear drums, or as if his body had sunk into the depths of the bottom of an eleven-feet deep pool, and every letter of each carefully placed word had become nothing but distorted muffles in the background.

 

Izaya couldn't breathe.

 

It's just a joke, that's all it is.

 

Isn't it?

 

But time still ticks onward and the shuffling of papers that Shinra had placed on the table is shoved into the clammy hands of the info broker. And for once, Izaya can barely shake his himself out of the deafness that refuses to free him of its captivity and Shinra takes notice, but leaves the silence to fill up the void that becomes comparable to a no-man's-land. The gleam of the doctor's glasses and the printed papers of his recent illness tucked into his hands still doesn't feel real enough.

 

_Perhaps that is the joke_ , is what Izaya continues to contemplate on as Shinra takes up the silence as a sign to start talking again. Shinra says something about the next couple of steps that he should take next, but everything is still so muffled in comparison to understanding the joke. Maybe it's a prank, because he's still to young and the object of the topic can't relate to someone so healthy as him.

 

But the papers in his hand still exist and the cheery blank stare on Shinra's face has cracks on the surface that rings with pity. It's too real to be a simple joke or a prank, and Shinra's taken it too far. But Izaya is better than that, he's simply just not anyone to fall for such vulgar humor for a bored doctor that might be high off of masochistic pain.

 

Shinra has worked so hard to make this prank seem so realistic though, and it would be a pity to bring the doctor's crude humor to an end... so he'll play along. Just this once, he'll allow Shinra to indulge himself with humor Izaya would rather not understand even if it intrigues him all at the same time.

 

He will play along, if that's what Shinra wants, and with that thought in mind:

 

"Can you repeat that again, Shinra?" 


End file.
